Doug Tedford

When migrant workers and their families move from state to state for agricultural employment, they bring with them many unmet needs and aspirations. Like anyone else who wants to get ahead in the United States, they need education and other services, such as health care. But poor English skills, the mobile nature of their work and other factors make it difficult for them to access these services. As a result, migrant families often don’t obtain the education and social supports necessary to break the cycle of poverty.

Doug Tedford, a Ph.D. in Education student at Walden University, says the way to remedy this problem is to provide the migrant families with educational programs targeted specifically to their needs. Tedford is the education research director for the Texas Migrant Council (TMC), which serves migrant communities in five states and is an organization that Texas state Sen. Judith Zaffirini calls the finest social justice organization she's worked with.

Tedford, a former school teacher, with a background in teaching ESL (English as a second language) and developing published ESL materials, created the TMC’s Migrant/Seasonal Head Start Family Literacy Program, which serves adult farm workers and children in 19 of the TMC’s Migrant/Seasonal Head Start centers in Ohio, Indiana and Texas. (The TMC has 68 Migrant/Seasonal Head Start centers in five states and is the second-largest provider of these services in the nation.)

The program’s broad focus is on improving the conditions of migrant and seasonal farm workers by providing health care, day care, child and adult education, and employment services.  

“Most of the parents who take part in our family literacy services have a limited understanding of the resources that are available free of charge to help them succeed,” says Tedford, who is bilingual and has worked for seven years in Mexico and Central America, “and they have a very limited formal education.”

The Migrant/Seasonal Head Start Family Literacy Program offers migrant and seasonal farm workers a variety of classes (such as ESL or GED preparation, job training, and parent-child mentoring) at hours convenient for them. Participants’ language levels and previous education determine class setting, and report cards and continuous follow-up are offered year-round, as are individual mentoring and coaching.

The program has worked with more than 650 migrant families since 2001 and boasts many successful graduates who have learned English and obtained job training and better employment.

“This program gives low-income Hispanic farm-worker families the opportunity to advance on an educational and vocational level,” says Tedford. “Not educating migrants keeps them on the track of perpetual poverty.” 

The doctoral program Tedford is pursuing at Walden picks up the many threads of this issue, he says. Tedford’s dissertation, which he began preliminary work on  this spring, is tentatively titled Enhancement of Parental Skills for Mentoring Low-Income Hispanic Children for Academic Progress, Preschool Through Grade 3.

“The work I have undertaken with the TMC since 2001 ties directly to the subject: that is, developing intergenerational academic and vocational improvement [programs] for low-income Hispanic parents and their children,” Tedford says. “The dissertation will also explore how to fortify the mentorship role through improved parent training, public policy, and laws that support and fund it.”  

In July, Tedford accepted an award for the Migrant/Seasonal Head Start Family Literacy Program on TMC’s behalf from The Annie E. Casey Foundation and the National Council of La Raza. (NCLR is the largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States.)

The organizations awarded the TMC a “Family Strengthening Award,” which recognizes programs that have an impact on Hispanic families. The award includes a $10,000 grant to support program funding.

—By Danielle Sweeney

Archived Features front page